Since the demise of the Soviet state, most Russians found themselves living in typical old Soviet buildings. Most of the buildings had balconies and this is where the urge for individuality was expressed. People started heavily modifying their balconies for a number of reasons. Firstly, most of the balconies were just open air balconies and were not isolated from the outside, so they couldn't be used in winter, or during rains, etc. So the first stage of modding a balcony was to

turn it into a sort of room to be able to use it all year round. Since everyone was doing this job independent of other people living in the same apartment building the balcony room designs emerged with a really diverse variety. And since every balcony was individually designed, people started to decorate them, often very heavily. So let's see what happened with this selection of what might be the forty most crazily modded Russian balconies!

An interesting story is unfolding in Primorye safari park in Russia and thousands of Internet users are watching it. It started with a regular meal that was delivered to a Siberian tiger kept in a park. His name is Amur. So one day Amur got a meal - he often gets live meals - either small rabbits or some other smaller animals, but this time park workers wanted to

treat him with a live goat. However, instead of eating it Amur became best friends with an animal that was supposed to become his dinner. Let's see how it happened and how they get along now. We'll see plenty of photos inside and even a few videos of them living together and doing all sort of things you would never expect from such a pair!

Over five hundred people gathered at Turkish embassy in Moscow to protest and throw stones, bottles, paint cans and even eggs into the building to express their opinion on the recent act of the Turkish air force which

downed a Russian jet bomber in Syria yesterday. The embassy building was secured by police who arrived promptly but they didn't arrest anyone. Let's see how the building looks after the protests.

In a sci-fi movie "Martian" an astranaut left on the Mars all alone tries to survive in any possible ways. It is especially curious how he produces water and grows potatoes - but actually something like this had already been done by Soviet scientists fifty years ago. Working on prototypes of future bases on the Moon and other planets, they managed to create closed systems

that independently produced air, water and even food for participants of the experiment. In the 60-70s at the order of a world-known scientist Sergey Korolev they made a prototype of a space station where people could live for months without obtaining water, air and food from outside. That result has never been repeated by anyone since then.

Some call those photos propaganda, some are being nostalgic and think this was the best of what happened to Russia and her people ever. Those photos are very bright and show a really bright side of life in the state

which disappeared long ago. There are no actors in the photos, no models, just people caught having a good time. Take a look at this really interesting set of photos. First photo above is Crimea in 1963.

This city has nothing special about it, says Alexander, a Russian blogger and traveller who is known to take awesome photos of places he visits. It's just an old "Soviet" town in Georgia, only its nature makes it

stand out a bit. But what makes it really interesting is an ancient stone fortress called "Rabbati". This fortification was built in sixteen century by Turkish military. Let's see how it looks now!

Lot of us have the satellite dishes that receive TV or internet signal from space. However rarely we think how the signal actually gets into the satellites? There is no cable to feed the signals to space. For these space link stations are used like this one in Dubna, Russia. Thanks to Dmitry who went there and made those awesome photos we can

see how it looks like inside.. and its huge! Over than sixty of large diameter space transmitting dishes pointed toward satellites and much more is inside. This installation was top secret during Soviet times and still is a very restricted access area, but Dmitry got the chance to get inside and we are lucky he did!

This is the Russian north, the Arkhangelsk Region, where asphalted roads are not typical. According to blogger muph, it is always nice to be there. The Oshevensky tract stretches from Kargopol to Oshevensk. Kargopol is a big city (compared to

others in the north), while Oshevensk is actually a bunch of villages united under the same title - Oshevenskoye. This place is undoubtedly another treasure of genuine beauty of Russian nature and old Russian architecture at its best.